Recap of Massachusetts’ Fiscal Year 2025-26 Legislative Session

Introduction

The Massachusetts legislative session for 2025-2026 will end on January 5, 2027, but its formal session, the part of the session for passing bills that are considered more contentious, ended on July 31, 2026. However, this year, due to a new rule, the Legislature will have more time to continue working on legislation considered more contentious past July 31st if the legislation is in front of a conference committee.

Overview of the Bills

This session, state senators and representatives submitted over 6,500 bills. Neighborhood Villages identified over 60 bills that would impact early education and child care. They ranged widely in content and included legislation that sought to create additional revenue sources for early education and child care; increase wages for early educators; better integrate family, friend, and neighbor care (better known as FFN) into the formal system; and more. Only two of these bills advanced through the legislative process and became law. They include a law to protect children, families, and immigrants from federal immigration enforcement and to improve early literacy. One additional bill is in front of a conference committee, and the rest died in session or were sent back to be studied further.

Early Education and Child Care Bills that Became Law

These are the two bills that became law:

• The PROTECT Act (An Act Promoting Rule of Law, Oversight, Trust and Equal Constitutional Treatment): It is aimed at safeguarding civil rights and limiting state and local collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. The bill includes limits on cooperation between local authorities and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); requires judicial warrants for courthouse arrests; bans new 287(g) agreements that allow local police to carry out federal immigration enforcement duties; and provides protections for individuals in sensitive locations such as child care programs, schools, hospitals, and courthouses. For more information about the protections provided by the law, check out guidance issued by the Governor’s Office, Executive Office of Education, and Department of Early Education and Care here.

• An Act Relative to Teacher Preparation and Student Literacy: It is designed to improve student literacy across Massachusetts and provide schools and educators with additional tools to support early reading success. It creates a non-budgeted special revenue fund called the Early Literacy Fund to develop a free, complete high-quality curriculum for kindergarten through grade 3, provide grants to school districts, fund professional development for educators, and more. It also mandates districts to select high-quality early literacy curriculum, screen students for learning disabilities, collect data, and more.

Additional Bill that Impacts Early Education and Care

One additional bill that may impact early education and care is currently in front of a conference committee made of three senators and three representatives. The committee will negotiate and try to come to a consensus on the contents of the legislation. Then the full Legislature will vote on it before it goes to the Governor for her signature. The bill being negotiated by the conference committee is:

An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act: The bill safeguards consumers from businesses that collect or process their personal data. It outlines consumers’ rights and businesses’ responsibilities with regard to consumers’ data, and places requirements on businesses on how to handle consumer data like prohibiting them from selling sensitive data. The House version of the bill exempts educational nonprofit organizations, which may include early childhood education centers (the language does not define an educational nonprofit organization) but still requires educational nonprofit organizations that collect and process children’s data to do so in accordance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The Senate version does not provide an exemption for educational nonprofit organizations. This would mean that if the Senate version becomes law early childhood education centers would have to abide by it if they collected or processed the personal data of 60,000 consumers. Most single-site programs likely won't reach that threshold, but large multi-site providers may. 

Bills that Impact Families with Small Children

There were also several notable bills that would or will impact families with small children. They include:

• An Act Enhancing Child Welfare Protections: This bill was signed into law by the Governor. It helps protect the wellbeing and rights of children in state care, provides the Office of the Child Advocate with additional tools to review child fatalities and critical incidents, and modernizes the Child Requiring Assistance system. It includes a Foster Children’s Bill of Rights and enhances the role of Family Resource Centers to provide community-based support and keep children out of the court system.

• An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care: This bill was also signed into law by the Governor. It updates Massachusetts’ abortion law by allowing doctors to rely on their professional medical judgement when it is consistent with accepted standards of care, when providing abortion care later in pregnancy. Its purpose is to provide patients facing devastating fetal diagnoses, serious pregnancy complications, or other complex medical circumstances, timely care without unnecessary legal uncertainty.

• An Act Relative to Economic Development in the Commonwealth: This bill is currently in front of a conference committee. Its purpose is to drive industry innovation and promote economic opportunity and job creation.

• An Act to Promote Student Learning and Mental Health: This bill is currently in front of a conference committee. It seeks to prohibit the use of mobile phones and other personal electronic devices at public or district schools.